Eclipse Chapter 26 – A fucking monster.

Previously: Bella was 100% okay with her boy toy ripping limbs of things.
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Annie: The chapter opens with Bella telling us that the vampires are all so perfect they couldn’t possibly ever need or use beauty products so Alice must have filled the bathroom with stuff so Bella can cover up her ugly human face. Great.

Alice brushes Bella’s hair (K: Because a child needs both a father AND a mother. Edward can’t do it all, you guys) and Bella whines that she wants to go to La Push because she wants to go and sit by Jacob’s bedside but Alice tells her she needs to go home so Charlie won’t get suspicious. This back and forth goes on for a page and a half. Bella worries about Jacob while Alice insists she goes home to protect the alibi.

Alice compliments Bella on her new dress that’s supposed to make Charlie believe they were shopping. Bella asks Alice if she will be like Bree (RIP), when she becomes a vampire. (M: If she will die super quickly and put everyone out of their misery? I wish.) Alice tells her that she will, but the Cullens will be there to keep her under control. So same as now. Okay.

Catherine: Also wow. Wow to her finally connecting the dots about what it’s gonna be like to be a baby vampire like 600 page too late. 

Annie: Bella asks Alice why the vampire super powers don’t work on her and Alice tells her the powers that deal with manipulating the mind have no effect on Bella. My guess is because she’s brainless. (K: Agreed) Bella is confused by Alice’s explanation, which supports my Bella is brainless theory, but she hides her confusion from Alice. IDK.

Marines: It’s basically like how she hides her fear of Edward or her discomfort around Jacob. 

Annie: These are Bella’s closest companions and she is constantly having to hide how she feels from them. Sounds like friendship and love!

Alice pets Bella’s face, which is still weird to me. Maybe even weirder than when Edward does it, because my friends don’t really go around petting each other’s faces. Alice assures Bella that ‘he’ (Jacob?) will be fine.

Bella seems to be more worried about herself, and asks Alice about her future, wanting to know if Alice sees her becoming a vampire. Alice sees her becoming a vampire and tells Bella that if she changed her mind, she would see that.

Bella seems to be unhappy about her impending vampirism, but says she basically has no choice? (C:…Yes you do?) (K: The Twilight series: continuing to send terrible messages to teenagers the world over.) Alice tells Bella that she doesn’t remember anything before waking up to Jasper as a vampire, so she doesn’t know what it’s like to choose between two good things and she feels sorry for Bella. Bella doesn’t want Alice to feel sorry for her; she doesn’t deserve sympathy.

Bella finally goes home and Charlie is waiting for her. He asks her about the shopping trip, and then if she’d heard about Jacob. Bella tells him that she did and that she’s going to La Push after she makes dinner.

Bella cooks and Charlie talks about seeing Jacob and how much he was swearing. He said that he was glad Bella wasn’t there, because her pure ears shouldn’t hear swearing like that. He tells Bella she’s definitely not allowed to ride a motorcycle and that Jacob was taunting Charlie about how he must be relieved that Bella loves Edward because Edward isn’t so stupid to go and get nearly dead in a fake motorcycle accident. What the fuck is even happening here? What purpose does this reveal serve?

Mari: I feel like I’ve said this a lot throughout the series but for real you guys, for real: I genuinely have no idea what in the Pancho-hell is even happening. 

Catherine: I’m pretty sure it’s just more ‘Look at how boo-hoo sad Jacob is that Bella doesn’t want to hop on his dong’. So glad that Meyer squeezed as much pity for his sexually assaulting ass as she could into this. 

Annie: Then Charlie trolls us with this:

“Edward’s more mature than Jacob when it comes to your safety, I’ll give him that much.”

LOLOLOLOL.

Charlie continues to talk, I guess because we need to know what happened during the anti-climatic non-fight from the perspective of Billy?

Kirsti: Well, OBVIOUSLY.

Annie: Billy was weird and distracted, and Charlie said there was a lot of loud howling. Like an animal in pain. An animal. You know. JACOB. And then Jacob was there and hurt. (M: HMMMM….)

Charlie tells Bella that Carlisle was called in to tend to Jacob, and they seemed to be friendly now. Edward was there, too, and Charlie said HE WAS SURPRISED THAT EDWARD WAS NICE TO THE NEAR DEAD JACOB, and because of this, he’s now decided that Edward is a good man.

Mari: You can really tell a lot about a man by how he treats someone nearly dead who can’t even tell how they are being treated. Or something.

Catherine: Also, nothing about how he treats his daughter. Let’s not bring the feelings or needs of a woman into this, oh no. Just the men. 

K: What did Charlie expect? That Edward – WHO HE THINKS IS EIGHTEEN – would be all “Welp, better put Jacob out of his misery. Charlie, can I borrow your sidearm?”??? Like… I don’t even understand what’s happening right now.

Annie: Charlie tells Bella that Jacob will be fine, but Bella is worried remembering how fragile and pale he looked. Bella is finally starting to feel like giving up being human may be a sacrifice after all.

She puts Charlie’s dinner on the table and goes to leave. Charlie says he’s feeling superstitious and believes he’s going to loose Bella soon. He makes her promise to let him say goodbye to her before she runs off with Edward. Bella says that’s not going to happen, but promises she will let him say goodbye. Charlie tells Bella that he loves her, and she tells him she loves him, too. No nasty comments or sarcasm this time.

Bella gets to La Push and is glad that Carlisle’s car is gone but also sad because it means Edward’s not there. This proves to Bella that she’s meant to be with Edward. Because she misses him. I miss smoking, so I guess that means I’m meant to be with cigarettes forever? Thanks for explaining to me how that works, Bella.

Mari: Smoking and Edward can both kill you. Just sayin’. 

K: This explains a lot about my sister-in-law being both a smoker and an Edward Cullen fan.

Annie: Billy invites Bella in and tells her that Jacob has just woken up and is probably waiting for her. Bella goes in to see Jacob. It’s hard for her to look at him, ‘now that she knows she loves him.’ IDK. (C: Give me strength.) 

Jacob seems to know she’s there to underline that she’s picked Edward and makes jokes about how he’s not feeling any physical pain, just emotional pain. LOL. Hilarious.

Jake asks Bella how she’s doing and Bella seems confused as to why Jacob, the one with the major injuries, is asking if she’s okay. Jacob tells Bella that he didn’t think that Edward would physically hurt her, but he expected that Edward would at least have gone crazy on her. Bella tells Jacob that she’s fine, that Edward wasn’t even mad, that he just wants Bella to be happy. Jacob is upset that Edward didn’t fly off the handle. Jacob says that he was ‘counting’ on Edward to act crazy, that was Jacob’s goal. He wanted to push Edward into hurting Bella, so she would choose Jacob.

Wow and yikes.

Mari: Jacob is terrible and I kind of want to go find any semi-decent thing I ever said about him to delete it but also that takes effort and I’m done so instead I will sit here and be angry that I ever thought he was comparatively less awful than Edward. 

Catherine: I just… I can’t even. I don’t even remember any of this happening? Did I block it out? There’s no way I just didn’t notice the absolute BULLSHIT of this book, right? That can’t be possible. This is insane. 

K: I’ve read this series multiple times, and while I always decided that both Edward and Jacob were asshats, it was never obvious to me until now JUST HOW MUCH OF AN ASSHAT JACOB IS. 

Annie: Jacob flat out tells Bella that he’s been trying to manipulate Bella and that he’s just not nearly as good at it as Edward is. God, this is awful. Bella gets defensive and tells Jacob that at least Edward didn’t threaten to kill himself to make Bella kiss him. Bella apologizes for bringing that up, because she wasn’t going to blame Jacob for anything.

Uh. What? Jacob is a fucking monster. He is saying unapologetically that he’s a monster. And Bella’s all ‘can’t blame Jacob for the terrible choices he’s making of his own free will’.

This gets so much worse, so here are the highlights of this exchange between Bella and Jacob:

• Jacob says that he totes threatened to kill himself to get Bella to kiss him
• Bella tells Jacob she’s not at all mad that Jacob has been manipulating her
• Jacob says he doesn’t care if she’s mad or not and that he’d do it all again because his abusive behaviour made Bella realize she loved him
• Bella comforts Jacob
• Jacob says he’s glad he did all these terrible things, because he knows that he did everything in his power to win Bella, so he doesn’t regret going ‘all in’ even if he failed
• Bella apologizes to Jacob, then cries.
• Jacob accuses Bella of being ‘too convincing’ when she kissed him (after he threatened to kill himself if she didn’t kiss him)
• BELLA APOLOGIZES FOR KISSING HIM ‘TOO CONVINCINGLY’
• Jacob rejects her apologies, pulls her onto his bed for cuddle time and taunts her for crying
• Jake tells Bella she made him say these things because she wanted him to say them (He’s saying she WANTED him to blame her for kissing him the way she did when he manipulated her into kissing him in the first place. FUCK HIM.)
• Jacob promises he’ll be good from now on, but when Bella asks him if that’s another game, he won’t be straight with her

Okay. I seem to recall being vaguely Team Jacob when I first read these books. How did that even happen? How did I look at this manipulating, abusive jackass and go ‘Yup, he’s the better choice’?!?

Mari: I think it has something to do with the very false, very harmful idea that there is a better choice. How do you pick between abuses and manipulations? Meyer is essentially asking you to do it but she shouldn’t because that’s awful and stupid. 

Catherine: I can only imagine the amount of teenage girls this book put into abusive relationships, tbh. It would’ve gotten me too but thank god no one wanted to date me in high school. 

K: Yeeeah, I’m back to that whole idea of turning a string of library classes into “How to identify red flags in romantic relationships using the Twilight books”. Because HOLY SHIT NONE OF THIS IS OKAY. 

Annie: Jacob says he’ll be good, that they’ll just be friends. Bella asks how they could be friends when they love each other. Jacob asks Bella:

“You know that story in the Bible?”

AND I’M OUT. FUCK THIS.

Wait. I’m not done? This chapter isn’t over yet? Ugh. FINE.

So. Bible story time! Like Jake would be this familiar with Bible stories? IDK. I had to look it up.

Jake is referring to the story of King Soloman, where two women are fighting over a baby, so the King threatens to cut the baby in half. Because apparently, the baby’s true mother loves the baby so much that she would give up claim to the baby, to keep the baby safe.

Jacob tells Bella that he’s going to stop trying to cut Bella in half anymore. Gross. And can we all take a shot for infantilizing Bella again?

Booze, brain bleach, I’m not picky.

Mari: I absolutely buy that part of Meyer’s inspiration was two women fighting over a baby in the Bible. That just seems right.

Catherine: Meanwhile, all I can think of is this: 

K: Except that Jacob and Edward would fight over the bottom half because that’s the part with the vagina… (M: KIRSTI. WHY.) 

Annie: Jacob says the worst part is he knows what might have been. Bella goes on for a page about how Jacob was her soulmate, how it could be between them and about how maybe there’s something more than soulmates out there for Jacob.

Closer than you may think, Bella. (M: In your ovaries.) (C: Oh my god.) (K: Excuse me while I hurl.)

Jake tells Bella that Edward is like a drug for her. Jake asks Bella to tell him the worst part of her and Bella tells him that they could have a life together, that she wanted it, but she never had a choice.

Jake promises again to be good now, then teases her about getting married. Bella said it won’t be right away, Alice is busy planning it. Jacob asks Bella if she’s going to be turned into a vampire before or after the wedding and she tells him after.

Why are we revisiting this? We, the readers, know all this. Stop repeating details just to up your page count, Meyer.

Catherine: Meyer has no idea how to write, “We talked about the wedding a bit” or something similar. She has to include every single line of dialogue because that’s how they taught her to write at Needless Ramble University. 

Annie: They talk about her worries about being turned into a vampire, about how Bella is worried about her parents, then Bella rubs her face against Jacob and whispers in his ear that she loves him. FFS. Really, Bella?

Jacob wraps his arm around Bella and tells her that he wishes that was enough and that he’ll always be waiting in the wings, that he’ll be there if she changes her mind. Bella is all ’til my heart stops beating’.

LOLZ, hilarious.

Bella asks if Jacob will want her to visit him after she’s a vampire, and then Bella wonders how long it will be before Jacob finds a girl, and she wonders how jealous she’ll be of that woman.

Jesus, pass the brain bleach. (M: Girl, we’ve passed it like 7 times now.) (C: Somebody needs to make a run for more.) (K: We should have bought stock in Brain Bleach back when we were recapping season 4 of Angel. We’d have made ourselves trillionaires by now.) At least the last time I read this book, I didn’t know what they were referring to. This time it’s just ham-fisted and disgusting.

Jacob admits that Bella being jealous of a new woman might be fun. Ew. No, please, stop.
Bella kisses Jacob and tells him that she loves him. He tells her that he loves her more. And Bella then leaves, but she must be walking backwards out of his room, because she’s able to give us this observation:

He watched me walk out of his room with an unfathomable expression in his black eyes.

If only terrible, cheating narration was the worst part of this, guys.

 

Next time on Eclipse: We finally buy stock in Brain Bleach, probably, in chapter 27.